The genesis of genius is often in being stupid. Not the idiotic kind of stupid, but more the keeping-it-simple kind. Stupid enough to just do the not-terribly-exciting stuff consistently, to create the conditions in which great results can show up. One example of this...

I bumped into a former GTD participant earlier this week, and I could see from her body language that she wasn’t keen to see me. Initial pleasantries past, I found out why. “I’m off the wagon”, she said, sheepishly. “That’s great!” I countered. This did not seem to...

A bad system will beat a good person every time. – W. Edwards Deming Tuesday was my first day back after a couple of weeks of stay-cating here in London. Doing London-y things, some of which I’ve been meaning to do since arriving 21 years ago. It was a delicious...

For the past seven years we’ve been out doing this GTD thing for clients large and small, and we’ve been getting consistently great feedback on how it is positively impacting the lives of those who use it. As people who have made it our job to spread these...

Mr Melnyk, my grade 2 teacher, was a lovely guy. As one of only two males and the only Ukrainian on the teaching staff at my primary school, he was a poster child for diversity well before his time, and a great athlete to boot. In theory, someone for little boys to...

In a recent seminar I clocked that one of the participants was not happy. He was trying to be, but his question betrayed considerable doubt: “Love the lists”, he said, “but I still don’t have any more time than I did before. When am I going to actually do the things...

At some point when meeting new people, once we’ve passed the pleasantries and have moved on to occupations, I’ll have a stab at describing what I do for a living. When I’m less successful, I’ll hear a version of the following reply: “Oh, so you do time...

If you are reading this, you are like Novak Djokovic. At least a bit. You haven’t won a bunch of Grand Slams of course, but if you have subscribed to this newsletter you are clearly interested in improving your mastery of something. If you are different from Djokovic,...

I knew my wallet was being stolen as it was happening, but was strangely powerless to stop it. While checking out one of the delightful displays of fresh fruit and veg in the market just off the Rambla in Barcelona, I felt something unusual happening with the bag...

It’s the 4th of February today. Set any new resolutions at the beginning of this month? I didn’t think so. Strange how we do that in January, but in February not so much. Still, I have to ask: how did you do? In January, I mean. Research shows that although millions...

There is still a lot to do this week, but many of those I’m meeting are already starting to move into end-of-year mode. With that often comes a review of the past year, sometimes done with columns for positive and negative things that happened along the way. That...

It’s a four-letter word. A bad ‘un. So awful is this word that its use has been de facto banished from organizational discourse. And yet the feeling this word describes is probably the biggest barrier there is to getting game-changing things done. It lurks in every...

I had a haircut the other day. Well, not just any haircut, THE haircut. The best of my life. One that changed my day, and – to a certain extent – my life. One that I’m still telling people about 3 weeks later. This was no ordinary haircut. The circumstances...

…Or how dodging misattribution could save your job and your sanity. To solve a problem efficiently – or solve it at all – it is necessary to correctly identify the problem. This sounds obvious. It also sounds much easier than it actually is. For starters, there...

It always starts small, and – in the beginning – it always make sense: “I’ll just stay here over lunch to take care of some things I didn’t get done this morning”, or “ I’ll stay a bit later to work on that report for tomorrow”, or – more and more – “I’ll...

Years ago, when I was only a GTD baby, I remember one of the GTD grown-ups saying something like: “Anyone can do the inbox thing. It is what happens once the inbox is empty that is what really counts.” As someone who – at that point – was not yet consistently...

“Wow. That is fabulous.”, she said, a huge grin spreading across her face. “That will make a huge difference”. The woman in question – a senior banker in a global bank – was not prone to outbursts of enthusiasm. What could provoke such a statement? A diet...

That is not a typo. I’m not talking about the cost but the affordance, or what something in our environment allows us – or invites us – to do. A simple example would be a button on a device. The button invites us to push it or twist it, while a cord...

Yes, you read that correctly. The paper-less office has been talked about for decades, but few people are experiencing it as a reality yet – despite years of peering hopefully from between piles of paper looking for it (and its close cousin, reliable speech...

For most of us, it is over. This year’s Christmas and New Year’s break — with its oh-so-elegantly placed statutory holidays and weekends — has been a good long rest. Judging by e-mail volumes, there was an un-discussed but somehow mutually-agreed...

There was frost on the rooftops here in London last night, and I’ve had to trade in my fall overcoat for a winter one in recent days to keep from shivering my way through the day. No idea if that will continue, but we are definitely moving winter-wards and into the...

Usain Bolt is an amazing sprinter. The fastest man ever recorded. Interestingly, he doesn’t actually sprint all that much. More than me for sure, but relative to the time available to him it is a miniscule fraction that he spends running out on the edge...